Three Movements

I struggled with whether to write a post this week. I decided to because the witness of my readers helps move my thinking forward.

My beloved father has been in the hospital with pneumonia that may be an indication of a more serious problem. Daddy has been in remission for almost 20 years from prostate cancer that had metastasized. His doctor 19 years ago, described the cancer as being “all over him.” Through the miracle of chemo by mouth, the cancer was arrested. Now it may be back. Or not. We’re waiting to hear the lab results. We do know that one of his lungs is not expanding because of a hard mass.

Despite the cancer, until recently Daddy experienced fairly good health except for low back pain due to a growth near his spine. He has lived to watch my children grow up and attend university and to meet his first great-grandchild. Until the pneumonia he daily took walks, read two newspapers and enjoyed a cold beer. He also traveled to family reunions, tended his tiny garden, attended jazz festivals and watched my brother, a blues musician, perform.

We have had him with us far longer than any one could have expected. Still I‘m reluctant to think about letting him go. He has told me several times in the past months, “I can’t live forever. I’ve got to go sometime. I’m 80 years old. I’m tired.” And well he should be.

Daddy was born in Jim Crow-era Newnan, Georgia, to a sharecropper father whom he watched cheated repeatedly as he sold his cotton to the powers that were. A leader in his community, my grandfather was reduced to less than less-than. He dared not protest nor hint at any anger for fear of losing his life as well as his livelihood. Unfortunately he turned his rage on his family. When my father was a teenager, my grandmother, tired of being battered, walked to the train station and headed north. Her six children soon followed.

My father didn’t find the North much friendlier. After serving in the Marines, he worked in Ohio steel mills. Black men received the worst jobs in the mills; Daddy worked in the lowest, hottest parts. Workers were frequently laid-off which made it difficult to pay the mortgage on our little house. During the off-times he worked at a car wash to support us. Other times, he worked as much overtime as he could. He often worked seven days a week to help pay for my university tuition and extras like a short trip abroad.

Despite his hard work, Daddy was not afforded the dignity he should have received. Bankers refused to cash his paycheck—even though it was drawn on their bank. Toward the latter part of his work life, when he drove red-hot steel on tractor-trailers between mills, his loads were often refused at the gate. He would have to wait 8 hours or more to unload and reload; paid by the load, this cut into his pay. And when he had to take disability retirement because of the cancer, he was denied one of his pensions.

If anyone deserves rest, it is he.

Because summer is almost over and it’s almost time to move again, I have slowly begun moving small loads into my new apartment. It’s a beautiful place with views of the Potomac. In the winter I’ll be able to see the Washington Monument and the Kennedy Center clearly from my windows. At first I wasn’t sure about moving to this particular place, but after seeing it I know it’s the right place for me.

Moving now holds more emotional urgency because of my father’s situation. I’ve already moved into a place of gratitude for the gift of time I’ve had with Daddy. Most of his brothers are gone, and, as he recently told me, “All the guys my age are dead.” I know when I see him tomorrow I’ll have to move to a place of acceptance: of his fragility, his suffering and his refusal to be treated for certain conditions. When I protest, my friends remind me to ask him what he wants. It is his life and he can live it—or not—as he will. I have to remind myself of what I’ve told others, “People choose the time of their death.” That could be 10 years away. Still when the end does come as Daddy so often reminds me that it will, I imagine my final movement will have to be to a place of grace beyond imagining.